Brown's bullying -highlights why bullying is a bad thing

It's not just that it's not nice. It's not just that it harms people. It's that it makes for organisational stupidity and waste. Check out the whole article Brown's bullying has paralysed Labour | Jenni Russell | Comment is free | The Guardian if you're into the politics but the bullying issue is nicely summarised here: :

"Anyone who has worked alongside a bully knows how destabilising they can be. The tension and fright that a highly placed bully creates cascades down an organisation, as impotent subjects and witnesses relieve their own feelings by being sharp, tense or unfair to their colleagues or inferiors. Bad behaviour is legitimised, and anxiety gets in the way of good decision-making."

This is of a piece with the reasons for not creating classrooms where aggression and anxiety are normalised: it gets in the way of any but the most primitive, behaviouristic learning. I'we seen the effects in workplaces and would have to say that bullying deprives an organisation of talent by stealing the emotional security and energy needed to sustain and nurture creativity, good will and focus on proper mission. Instead you get people who become anxious, protective, defensive, and spending much time calming down and debriefing the latest assaults on their dignity.

Loving ones neighbour is good for corporate mission.

Belief in a caring god improves response to medical treatment for depression, study finds

Another embarrassing study for atheists. Evidence keeps mounting up that believing in God seems to have a variety of psycholagical benefits. You'd almost think that we were designed to function better with a God thing going on in our lives. However, it was only a small study. Still, it's not the first or only such. Belief in a caring god improves response to medical treatment for depression, study finds: "In patients diagnosed with clinical depression, belief in a concerned God can improve response to medical treatment,"

POWER 2010 | Invite your friends to our movement

POWER2010?

They are a people-powered grassroots campaign who are organising for change in the UK. Over 100,000 votes were cast to decide their priorities - and the five most popular are now the basis of the campaign: the POWER Pledge.

The campaign will take these ideas to every candidate from very party at the election - real grassroots change in action. You can see the POWER Pledge and sign up to it here.


POWER 2010 | Invite your friends to our movement

Adam and Dewey

Check out this SlideShare Presentation. I've just edited together the slides and the recording of a talk I gave to the Librarians' Christian Fellowship in St Nic's Nottingham in April 2009. It's about 40 minutes long and deals with the theology of knowing and of culture coming out of the story of Adam giving names to the animals. It covers things like language, taxonomy, constructivism and refers to Borges, the periodic table and a fantasy novel ... are you interested yet?

Adam and Dewey

View more presentations from Andii Bowsher.

I think I just upped the ante ...

... on personal eco-activism: I reported to Gateshead council an incident of suspicious pollution of a stream (for goodness sake it was running GREEN -like someone had poured paint into it) for at least two days over the weekend. It happened here 54.98104,-1.78325 - Google Maps and I sent this reference to them. I also have photos of the water -but I've not yet uploaded them. See what Gateshead environmental protection say...

Vote for your favourite David Cameron Billboard

It is said that political parties only really campaign to win the votes of the 200,000 voters whose votes actually make a difference. They do this by targetting particular areas and demographics. The rest of us can whistle. So here's a campaign that takes the battle back to the parties, in this case the Tories. Vote for a Change | Vote for your favourite David Cameron Billboard: "Watch our new video showing why Cameron needs convincing that we need to bring reform to Westminster.
Then help get our message across to him by voting on which of three slogan finalists you think is best. The winning slogan will go on a billboard in Cameron's Witney constituency next week."

Support Robin Hood

ACT NOW - SUPPORT ROBIN HOOD!: "It’s time for international bankers to pay something back to society. After the financial crisis and hundreds of billions in bailouts, bonuses and profits are rising out of measure again.
A new proposal – a tiny “Robin Hood tax” on bank speculation – has gathered support from top economists and regulators, and could raise huge sums to stop public service cuts, fight poverty and protect the environment. But this idea faces heavy opposition from a powerful City lobby.
It’ll take a massive public outcry to get our leaders to support Robin Hood and make the banks pay their fair share -- sign below now, then invite everyone to join the merry band:"

By 2020, 80% of men will be overweight

Right: here's a series of snippets: "Eight out of 10 men and almost seven in 10 women will be overweight or obese by 2020, ... the incidence of diabetes, stroke and heart disease will dramatically increase, ... "We are being overwhelmed by the effects of today's 'obesogenic' environment, with its abundance of energy-dense food and sedentary lifestyles.""

I think that there are a couple of things arise from this: what is the actuarial effect of this? With regard to pensions, we've been assuming a continued increased longevity; but surely these figures put that in question. The irony would be that we stop killing ourselves from smoking, overwork etc only to do it by overindulgence.

The other thing that I muse over in the face of these figures is that our meat intake is part of the issue. And I'm not saying you can't be vegetarian and obese but in changing we are likely to be able to build in more healthy choices and to be eating more stuff that is good for us anyhow...

Just thinking out loud really ...

By 2020, 80% of men will be overweight, study shows | Society | guardian.co.uk:

Theiy are not British Gas

Ecotricity are just beginning to roll out 'green' gas (ie produced from 'native' British waste). And they have been harassed by British Gas -can you believe it? Here:
We are not British Gas | Energy | Zerocarbonista: "first alleged that we were ‘pretending’ to be British Gas. They didn’t like our tongue in cheek “Real British Gas” logo it seems – we’ve tweaked it a bit here to make them feel better. It’s hard to take that seriously – we are so not pretending to be British Gas. Why on earth would we? It was a joke guys. About a week later we got another legal threat, this time dear old BG claimed we were misleading people by offering Green Gas, when in fact it wasn’t (green)."
Now why are they so rattled by a minnow? Clue could be in the rest of the text ...

The importance of co-operatives

After a brief history of the Co-op movement mainly in Leeds, there's this comment: "I hope Labour is serious about introducing support and encouragement for the co-operative movement. It could unleash a power for social change which I hope would be irreversible."
I too hope Labour would be serious about this: I fear it's a 'nothing-to-lose-so-what-the-heck?' partial rediscovery of its radicalism on the part of the Labour movement. Unfortunately probably, too little too late and probably looking too cynical.
The importance of co-operatives | Peter Lazenby | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

Why Britain should declare war on Jersey

Why Britain should declare war on Jersey | Mark Thomas | Comment is free | The Guardian: "The Tax Justice Network (not to be confused with the rightwing Tax Payers' Alliance) estimates the UK loses about �18bn a year in tax revenue due to 'corporate tax efficiency' ie companies moving offshore. The Iraq war cost at least �8bn. So war with Jersey would not only be morally right but self-financing too. In fact we could probably do a bond issue for the invasion to pay for everything up front with the promise of a steady yearly return for investors."

Cold noses at the pearly gates?

There's some nice, or at least interesting, points made about theology in the first part of this article. Much reliant on Aquinas, but then Aquinas seems to have some good points to make about the relationship between soul and body. There's an over cavalier dismissal of the scriptural stuff which may not be as contradictory as she thinks, just initially confusing because stretched across a number of genres and needing theological elucidation. Intriguingly too, the quote from Aquinas is potentially over-literally construed; it may not be correct to interpret Aquinas to be spejking literally and in any case if we did then we have to think in terms of Resurrection and not just 'souls' (though at least this is defined holistically but not, I think, consistently considered that way: I rather suspect that Aquinas' souls would include most living beings not just some as indicated below).

The article leaves us with a little nest of questions: Cold noses at the pearly gates? | Heather McDougall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "Finally, even if Christians believe animals have souls (and I think there are grounds for saying that at least some of them do) then there remains the scientific challenge. Boundaries between species have become increasingly blurred through genetic engineering, and we can imagine a higher primate being given extra human genes. Would this creature have a human soul or an animal soul? At what point would it get a human soul? Even if we don't believe in souls, maybe we shouldn't consider the treatment of animals, ourselves, and bio-science, as ethically neutral."
I think that those are important questions, though I'm concerned that the supposition behind it seems to have too easily seemingly slipped into talk of souls and eternal life without hanging onto the issue of how anything might be related to eternity and where is consideration of Resurrection in this? I think these are very good questions: the kind of thing I'd love to see students tackle because it'd winkle out critical thinking about the issues behind the question as well as the application to plausible future dilemmas.

I tnhink the real issue comes down to 'what is the nature of the relationship between God and animals? And related to this is the question of the status of the non-human creation and all of that in relation to Resurrection (and some of the issues around this could be put crudely: Whill bacteria be ressurrected? And if so, which ones? Virii?) I suspect that this is partly what the language of 'souls' as used in this article is meant to capture.